34 Bird Portraits 



is interspersed with chuckles, squeaks, and harsh sounds, or inter- 

 rupted by a grating cry, so that it can make no pretense to be 

 called melodious. It seems sometimes as if the bird were simply 

 amusing itself. 



For a while you will regard the Butcher Bird as a good-natured, 

 good-looking fellow; it is not till you find, near its post of obser- 

 vation, mice or birds jammed into the crotches of twigs, or discover 

 a thornbush decorated with grasshoppers and caterpillars, that you 

 recall certain unpleasant reports about its character. When you finally 

 see it dash into a flock of sparrows and hear their screech of terror, 

 or see it tear out its victim's brains with that hooked bill, you will 

 understand its hawk-like habit of sitting where it can survey its whole 

 domain. The Hawks clutch their prey in their curved talons, and 

 then tear it with their beak. The Shrike's claws are neither curved 

 nor powerful, so that it is evident that it wedges its victims into 

 forked twigs or impales them on thorns, so that it can then tear off 

 portions to devour. But why it so often leaves them uneaten (the 

 practice of thus displaying its wares has earned the bird its name) 

 has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps the bird means to 

 return to them in times of scarcity, but they are so often left uneaten 

 that it seems probable that it has formed the habit of hunting and 

 hanging up its game, often with no thought of eating it. 



The Butcher Bird has often been persecuted for the destruction 

 of smaller birds; it seems far wiser to protect it, not only in order 

 to preserve so interesting a bird, but because birds form so small a 

 per cent of its food. In the spring and fall, it lives very largely 

 on insects, and throughout the winter, mice form a large part of its 

 diet. There is always danger of blundering when man interferes in 

 the concerns of nature, and if he once exterminates any creature, it 

 is beyond his power to re-create it. 



